


Will he ever

by rjn



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Family Feels, Getting Together, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:06:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29882943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: Like a big dumb idiot, Buck's always gonna take the plunge. But Eddie always sticks the landing.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 113





	Will he ever

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd stream of consciousness thingy. I'm working out how I want to write them.

Buck wonders, not for the first time, with a swell of dismay, _will he ever learn_. Or, more accurately, will he ever learn anything without trying, firsthand, and falling flat on his face. He’s never been able to find the balance, along the line of praise for daring and heroism without toeing over to where he’s chastised for recklessness.

The sailing of a ship. Bobby, uncomprehending of the weight of the compliment, and watching Buck redirect Christopher’s anxious energy into his latest handmade card for his dad, because Eddie was hurt and Christopher was not doing okay with it. Bobby had said Buck will make a hell of a good dad someday.

The torpedo and the sinking. Buck helping Eddie get settled in at home, bandages checked and pain medicine dispensed. Eddie says Bobby had been wrong. Buck chokes on it, feels his heart seize in concrete.

But the pat on the back, and Eddie’s tired voice, betraying his pain a little with the weakness of it.

“You’re already a good dad,” he says. “As far as some people are concerned.”

Eddie slants his eyes towards the bedroom where Christopher is sleeping. He’s doing that sort of not-quite-smile thing he does. Calm. Content. Maybe sometimes Eddie throws himself into things as recklessly as Buck does, but he makes it look like a plan. After the fact. Lazarus rising from the watery cave-in with jokes.

And so Buck’s soaring into the black, with no time to pray that the rigging will hold. His hands on Eddie, at his neck and his jaw, so that fingertips land at his hairline, at his shirt collar. He is kissing Eddie’s mouth, not shoving at him with his tongue or teeth, but gentler than he’s ever been. The intimacy of it is in the breathing of the same air.

A rigid silence, then:

“Buck?”

It’s the question mark that does it. The slightest uptick in tone. Buck had been so sure. Arrogant, it seems now, because there’s uncertainty there, in the way Eddie’s eyes remain open and in that slicing question mark on his name. He’s crashing hard. Reeling and wondering how to play it off.

“Sorry. Sorry.”

He launches himself off the couch and onto his feet, and he’s towering over Eddie now, and unstable, feeling like an overhead hazard, putting Eddie at risk instead of just himself. Will he ever learn? Why doesn’t he ever learn? The freefall, the panic. Here he goes again.

“I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“Just sit back down,” Eddie says. Tired, or maybe more exasperated now.

Buck knows he’s being reined in. And maybe that’s why he never learns. Maybe he’s been relying on Eddie to draw the lines, so that Buck never has to. And every part of him wants to bolt out the door, but his human lifeline is still there, just a little dented and frayed.

“Sit,” repeats the lifeline. And he holds fast.

Eddie Diaz is a maestro of pizza delivery. The way he walks back into the room and slides a cardboard box onto the coffee table like he’d conjured it out of nowhere. Not just the timing, the right kind of pie, too, and the right amount, like if you need to kill the whole thing to feel a sense of accomplishment or if you need to keep shoving slices down into an unending void. If you need a cold slice for breakfast before you head to the gym to reset, if you’re staying over.

Buck shouldn’t be surprised to hear the knock on the door and to find the pizza guy on the other side. The maestro has gone classic, pepperoni, and Buck is starving.

Eddie barely touches the food. He’s not great with medication and eating and Buck thinks he’ll have to watch that. If he’s still welcome, anyways, after whatever that was with the face-cupping and neck-brushing. Because he could have got away with the kiss part, of that he’s fairly certain. Eddie’s kissed him before, after all, a smack on the side of Buck’s head, making fun of his immaturity maybe, like Eddie was tucking in a second restless kid.

Oh man, and the kid. Buck will never forgive himself if his careless leaping into the unknown with Eddie has ruined the relationship with Chris.

“Remember the hotel two weeks ago?” Eddie says.

It’s like that, then. Because that was a rope rescue, a real Buckley-special, jumping and rappelling and swinging at the end of a hastily anchored line. He’s too reckless, is Eddie’s take. Not unfair.

“Yeah,” says Buck. “Okay. I know.”

“Remember the 8th floor window, you swinging way the hell out and flying at it, boots first, and just… ka-doink?”

Eddie flicks his fingers lazily.

“Yeah, okay.”

The window had been friggin’ bulletproof or something. Buck hit it so hard and been so unprepared for the glass not to give, that the vibrations had made his spine ache and caused a fizzing sensation like hitting his funny bone only it burned through his entire body. He’d lost his grip on his line for a fraction of second.

“That’s what it looked like, just then, when you tried to kiss me. Like you went full bore Evan-goddamn-Buckley at it, and just… _hit the wall.”_

Buck narrows his eyes. Sees the hint of something on Eddie’s face. He looks at the pizza boxes, the leftovers there and the implications.

“Ka-doink?” he says, incredulously. “Really?”

Eddie shrugs, winces when it pulls something around his injury.

“Ka-doink.”

They laugh. Buck with a kind of breathless relief, Eddie with a kind of dozy medicated huff.

“You should get some sleep,” Bucks says.

He knows that he should feel embarrassed about everything, but he can’t bring himself to feel anything but content with the warmth in Eddie’s voice when Eddie says, “Come here.” And slides down on the couch with his arm out until Buck settles in beside him, practically in Eddie’s arms. Crushing him, probably aggravating his injury, but when he goes to pull away again, a hand wraps around the back of his head, pulls him in. Eddie kisses him, solid, like everything else he does, with a sly little lick across Buck’s lips at the end.

Buck’s sex addict (meaningful pause) self-diagnosed line was never meant seriously. It was always covering a sadder more desperate longing, for love, that always just seems to hit harder when it’s romantic. But this, with Eddie, is much more… indelible. It hits hard because it’s a foundation. Buck doesn’t have to go out on a limb or push anything too far. But he does. Every time. And Eddie is his bit of bedrock in the sky. The freedom for Buck to make a mistake.

There’s nothing awkward, or shaky between them, even now. Maybe it will hum along and settle into something more romantic, maybe it will stay how it’s been. But it will stay. It will settle into place. Flat cardboard boxes smelling of garlic and basil will magically appear, sliding into place as needed for the rest of Buck’s life.

He should give Eddie more credit.

When will he ever learn?

He probably won’t. Because Buck is flying again, without a net. Doesn’t need one. Soaring, with his heart unfurling like a parachute. Uncomprehending at how this kind of love, at once ordinary and obscure, can feel so good.


End file.
